Introduction to the Resume/Brag Sheet

Article Type: Quick and Dirty

In
essence, a brag sheet is simply a resume.

A 50-year-old woman changing
careers is bound to have a very different sort of resume or brag sheet than you
will. Matter of fact, so will a 23-year-old college graduate heading out into
the world. (Notice we didn’t say “scary wild world where you’ll be competing
with a cast of hundreds for the same job.) As a teenager, your resume will—and
should—look and feel different from one where you’re trying to land a job.

A
brag sheet is also very useful to have when you’re asking for letters of
recommendation from teachers, coaches, and other leading adults in your life.
It lets everybody have a peek into the human that is you (so please wear clean
underwear). When you’re applying
to colleges, most of them want to see things other than your
stellar (or perhaps less-than-twinkly) GPA. What’s in your heart? What are your passions? What do you do after school and on weekends? Are your vacations simply for sleeping in? All of
this goes into your brag sheet.

Key
experiences that colleges are going to be looking for include:

Volunteer work.

Leadership positions.

Involvement in music and the
arts.

Clubs.

Cultural experiences.

Honors and awards.

Community service.

Employment. Even if you worked summers at
your dad’s commercial seating company, include it.

You should still make sure those grades are
included here, but in a perfect world (and let us just assume, for the rest of
this paragraph, that it is, indeed, perfect) you’ve been keeping track of every
extracurricular activity, sport, club, travel time, volunteer service, etc.
since ninth grade. It sure would be a lot easier to write this brag sheet thing
if you have…It’s not the time to be skimpy or overly humble. (That being
said, some colleges do verify these so do be honest.)